Salah al-Din al-Bitar

Salah al-Din al-Bitar (1912-21 July 1980) was Prime Minister of Syria from 9 March to 11 November 1963, succeeding Khalid al-Azm and preceding Amin al-Hafiz, from 13 May to 3 October 1964, succeeding and preceding Amin al-Hafiz, and from 1 January to 23 February 1966, succeeding and preceding Yusuf Zuayyin.

Biography
Salah al-Din al-Bitar was born in 1912 in Damascus, Syria to a Sunni Muslim family. al-Bitar became friends with Michel Aflaq while studying at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, and in 1947 he was elected Secretary-General of the Syrian Ba'ath Party. He was appointed Minister of Culture in the United Arab Republic, but on 24 December 1959 al-Bitar and other Syrian leaders resigned their posts in protest over Egypt's dominance in the republic. During the early 1960s, after several coups, al-Bitar thrice served as Prime Minister, and he sided with the Ba'ath Party in its feud against the Military Committee. He was exiled due to his opposition to Hafez al-Assad's government, and he was connected to Syrian dissidents in Iraq. On 21 July 1980, he was shot twice in the head as he left his apartment in Paris; he had previously received many death threats, and Assad was believed to have been responsible for his murder.